"Kiss Everything" by Jeannie Zandi

The more aware we become, the more sensitized and softened we get, the more we see how harsh we are, and it kills us. We don’t want to look at it, nor the pain underneath. And if we’re lucky, this slowing down crucifies us on our humanness, and we have to howl and open, open to the love that we are.

Nobody wants to go into these places where things are gristly, unkempt, unresolved, bedsprings sticking out all over, you know, where gum sticks to our shoe. You’ll notice that everything inside says “Get out, solve it, quick hide, do something!” And if it’s a really good one, everything outside is saying that too, where the walls themselves are reverberating with “Danger, danger Will Robinson! Don’t feel THAT! Get outta there!”I love to sail in there and have us all take one long slow breath, and let the sunshine of Presence in. If we slow it all down, this is the place where we have to feel the very thing that the spiritual path was supposed to eliminate, the very heart of separation: something here deserves to be banished.

These places are not places to get away from. That’s just what’s in there from the moment we got overwhelmed and instead of staying open and breathing, we had to shut down and start to cope in separation. We had to flee. And this whole emphasis on getting perfect and getting better and on “some day when all my shit is gone” is not where it’s at–it’s a fantasy. Freedom doesn’t happen because we get perfect; freedom happens because we so utterly embrace what’s here, exactly as it is.

I don’t care if we call it my shit, your shit, their shit–it’s OUR shit. As long as any one of us believes we’re shit, that’s OUR shit. And the most hilarious part is that every one of these ones that appears to be locked in a jail cell is just another face of God. Here’s God, pretending she’s locked in a jail cell–feels really real, can’t get out of it with just that insight. We have to climb down the stairs, get on our knees into the black gook with that face of God like she is our very own self and kiss her on the mouth or we’re not free there. It’s the embodied part of the paradox. You either kiss everything or you don’t, and you can’t fake it.